Devices for determining the general location of an enemy target in a combative situation are known. Of course, the ability to precisely locate a target to 15 meters CEP (Circular Error of Probability) is important, especially when the information may be used to destroy an enemy target. An operator on the ground or in an aircraft may be able to see, identify and precisely locate an enemy target up to several miles away. The operator may desire to exchange the geographic location of the target with a ground or air-based system, such as an artillery or an aircraft with a GPS guided missile.
Known location devices include devices using an inertial measurement unit (IMU) that may contain one or more gyroscopes (hereinafter gyros) for ascertaining the roll, pitch and/or yaw of a target relative to a known reference point. A drawback to gyroscopes is that they may initially be accurate, but the amount of inaccuracy/error increases with time and environmental conditions such as temperature. This change in error can start in less than one (1) second from power-up of the IMU. This change in error becomes important when a reference point is used to help locate a new target. If the rate of change of the error of the gyros is not compensated for, the time it takes to sight the reference point and the new target can cause an error in the location of the new target by greater than one (1) mil. A mil is a radial measurement that equals one (1) meter at a distance of 1000 meters.
Video cameras can be used to view objects at a distance and may be implemented with zoom functionality. The jitter of the human hand or other elements coupled to the video camera, e.g. a tripod, can cause a blurred image when the video camera is zoomed in on a distant object. To address blurring caused by jitter, this image can be stabilized according to a variety of known methods. In one video stabilization method, the video in the view finder is stabilized by shifting the image received in the view finder based on inputs received from two or more gyros. The gyroscopes sense the amount of jitter in the X and Y directions and communicate it to a video processor which can shift the received image in the view finder.